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Bolivian President Evo Morales Holds a Tin Ingot During a Ceremony in Vinto Tin Smelter in Oruro, Some 210 Km (130 Miles) South of La Paz, February 16, 2007

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Bolivian President Evo Morales Holds a Tin Ingot During a Ceremony in Vinto Tin Smelter in Oruro, Some 210 Km (130 Miles) South of La Paz, February 16, 2007 REUTERS/David Mercado (BOLIVIA) Bolivian President Evo Morales holds a tin ingot during a ceremony in Vinto tin smelter in Oruro, some 210 km (130 miles) south of La Paz, February 16, 2007. The president nationalized the Vinto tin smelter this year in the latest step in his drive to increase state control over natural resources. 60 • New Labor Forum D. La Botz By Dan La Botz LATIN AMERICA LEANS LEFT Labor and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism AFTER ALMOST TWENTY YEARS OF LIVING WITH THE WASHINGTON CONSENSUS OF FREE trade policies, a broad opposition to the political economy of neoliberal global- ization developed throughout Latin America in the late 1990s. As the Inter- American Regional Organization of Workers (of the ICFTU) meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in December noted, present dynamic situation to advance workers’ “The victories of Evo Morales [in Bolivia], interests. Lula [in Brazil], Chávez [in Venezuela] and The change in Latin America has been Rafael Correa in Ecuador, create an opportu- driven by massive protests involving general nity for the establishment of an integration strikes, sometimes violent uprisings, and a left- process different from the neoliberal model wing military coup. By 2006, these protest … and an opportunity to confront the free trade movements brought to power new left-of-cen- agreements that are being negotiated in the ter governments in several countries. The presi- region.” Some workers see an opportunity to dents elected in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ec- build a more humane capitalist system, while uador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Uruguay in others see a chance to construct socialism in this period came to power by opposing, at least Latin America. Whatever their long-term nominally, the free market policies pushed political agenda, all see opportunities in the upon them by the United States and the world New Labor Forum 16(2): 61–70, Spring 2007 CopyrightLatin © Joseph America S. Murphy Leans Institute, Left CUNY New Labor Forum • 61 ISSN: 1095-7960/07 print DOI:10.1080/10957960701279215 financial institutions—the IMF, World Bank, can and often do play a central role. and WTO. While the visions, programs, and actions of these governments vary significantly, FROM POPULISM THROUGH taken together this development represents an MILITARY DICTATORSHIP important shift in the politics of Latin America TO NEOLIBERALISM vis-à-vis the United States and its free trade N THE PERIOD BETWEEN 1930 AND 1970, LATIN agenda. More important, this block of nations IAmerica underwent a profound transforma- and peoples represents a search for an alterna- tion from a mostly rural to a mostly urban re- tive to the destructive and dehumanizing re- gion. Power shifted from the old elite, the iron gime of savage capitalism masked by the term triangle of landowners, military leaders, and the globalization. church, to new social forces: industrialists, the Working people, organized in many fash- urban middle classes, and the working class. ions, have been pushing from below to create Under the pressure of the worker’s movement governments that will stand up for them against populist leaders such as Getulio Vargaz in Bra- Washington and the international financial in- zil, Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico, and Juan Perón stitutions. The shift leftward has been anything in Argentina carried out reforms that brought but simple, and the labor movement is far from a higher standard of living to workers and peas- being the only factor. Unions as we know them ants. Governments like these nationalized are not the only, nor even necessarily the most important national resources such as oil, and important, organizations of working people. In created a nationalist economic model based on Latin America, labor unions exist in complex a mixed economy with a strong state sector and relations with many other social movements significant social programs such as workers’ and political parties, and sometimes with health insurance. armed guerrilla movements and left-wing mili- After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the tary officers. Relations between unions, peas- United States, with its Cold War ideology, ant organizations, indigenous movements, and clamped down in Latin America. Between 1965 left political parties are complex and dynamic and 1985, the United States supported right- and each nation’s experience is unique. Only in wing military coups in the countries of the Brazil has the labor movement been central to southern cone: Brazil (1965), Chile (1973), the political shift, while in other countries mili- Uruguay (1973), Argentina (1976), as well as tary leaders with broad popular followings, in- authoritarian or military governments in Gua- digenous people, or even students have been temala and in countries in the Caribbean, as a more important. Labor and social movements bulwark against communists and radical na- have used tactics and strategies ranging from tionalists. Under the military dictatorship, protest demonstrations and strikes to national unions were repressed, and many union lead- uprisings that verged on becoming revolution- ers and social movement activists were jailed, ary upheavals. So far, these efforts have only tortured, and killed. been partially successful in modifying the The U.S. push for an elite-led democrati- neoliberal model. Yet, the situation in these zation and for the neoliberal market model be- countries remains dynamic and labor unions gan simultaneously around 1985. This was not 62 • New Labor Forum D. La Botz a return to the Latin American democracy of subsidies cut, labor unions attacked, old: the conservative political parties who came industrywide pattern agreements dismantled, to power would represent the domestic capi- contractual working conditions were made talists who would profit by the neoliberal flexible, and subcontracting increased. As model. The new democratization relied heavily unions lost power, the collective bargaining on the mass media, marketing, and American consultants, and debilitated the nationalist-populist parties and their By 1997, 45 percent of all powerful labor organizations. The weak- ening of labor unions paved the way for Latin Americans lived in the grasp of global capital. poverty … [and] millions Introducing the neoliberal model, nevertheless, still involved massive eco- of workers began to nomic and political pressure. The Inter- national Monetary Fund imposed struc- migrate, first to the cities tural adjustment programs: cutting bud- of their own nation, then gets, ending state subsidies and demand- ing privatization. International trade [abroad] … agreements and treaties such as the Car- ibbean Basin Initiative (1983), Mercosur system was transformed; the governments and (1991), the North American Free Trade Agree- employers “changed the rules of the game.”2 At ment (NAFTA, 1994), the Caribbean Basin the same time, old machines were scrapped and Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA, 2000), and the new technologies introduced together with new proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, forms of organization of production, eliminat- opened up free trade between various Ameri- ing or disrupting preexisting informal work- can nations. The result of these developments place relations and union structures on the shop was the reassertion of the power of capital over floor. The worker who did not lose his job of- labor within the framework of the neoliberal ten lost his workmate and found his routine model. broken and his life altered. All this had profound consequences: non- THE IMPACT OF THE competitive firms closed, and in some places NEOLIBERAL MODEL ON entire industries perished, new export process- SOCIETY AND LABOR ing zones (maquiladoras) were established, though still the number of industrial jobs de- LOBALIZATION BROUGHT DRASTIC CHANGES TO GLatin American economies and societies clined, and unemployment rose. As male in- and particularly to industry-labor relations.1 dustrial workers were losing jobs, 33 million Markets were opened, even to foreign inves- women entered the Latin American labor mar- tors with up to 100 percent ownership, state- ket between 1990 and 2004, coming to make owned firms were privatized, industries were up 40 percent of the economically active popu- 3 deregulated, social budgets and government lation in Latin America. Wage differentials Latin America Leans Left New Labor Forum • 63 grew between the better educated skilled work- THE TRANSFORMATION ers and the uneducated and unskilled.4 Millions OF LABOR AND THE LEFT of workers, men and women, found employ- N MUCH OF LATIN AMERICA SINCE THE 1930S OR ment only in the informal sector, an illegal and I1940s a corporativist polical-labor system, underground economy without labor unions that is, a system where political parties con- or any form of social insurance (health and trolled the labor unions, had existed. Powerful pensions). In much of Latin America the in- nationalist-populist political parties—the formal economy came to make up between 25 Peronists (Justicalistas) in Argentina, Demo- and 40 percent of all employment. cratic Action (AD) in Venezuela, the Institu- By 1997, 45 percent of all Latin Americans tional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico— lived in poverty, and, in some countries, ex- had dominated the official labor federations: treme poverty, characterized by malnutrition respectively, the CGT, the CTV, and the CTM. and the deterioration of health, affected 20 During those years, loyal union bureaucracies percent of the population.5 Faced with such had privileged positions,
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